Move Often? This Flat-Pack Furniture System is Modular & Ultra-Portable

By S.A. Rogers

If you’re a frequent mover, you know the drill: hire a pricey team of movers to manage everything, attempt to entice friends into helping with free pizza, or just sell virtually every piece of furniture you own so that you don’t have to lug it up and down stairs and pack it into a truck for the third time in two years. Moving is stressful enough without worrying whether your wardrobe will fit through the awkward bedroom doorway or whether you’ll injure yourself carrying a heavy trunk down a long hallway.

While flat-pack furniture is easy to get home when you’re getting settled in, most types aren’t always easy to disassemble, and they don’t necessarily adapt to every new interior space. So, once you get to your new place, you start the cycle over again.

This system aims to subvert that cycle with furniture that not only breaks down in minutes, but also changes according to your needs. Designed by Sam Wrigley, the CRISSCROSS range of modular tables, wardrobes and cabinets is specifically aimed at students, travelers and other people who have to relocate often. Refreshingly simple, it mostly consists of wooden panels with holes in them so you can attach the accompanying connectors in various ways. Unlike Ikea furniture, these pieces don’t require tools to assemble, so you won’t be searching for a particular wrench when you need to take something apart at the end of your lease.

Designed and manufactured in the UK and tested for strength and durability so that it can withstand all that movement, the CRISSCROSS series is coated in wood wax to make it water-resistant, 100% recyclable, and made from wood sourced from sustainable FSC-certified forests. The available kits include a bedside table, desk, single cupboard, double cupboard, single wardrobe, double wardrobe and a DIY kit that lets you build whatever you want. These connector-only kits leave out the panels, so you can source them locally and cut them to any size or shape you like.

When you start building a piece of furniture from Ikea, you’re generally staring at a large bag of tiny parts and a picture-based instruction manual that’ll often leave you scratching your head. With the CRISSCROSS system, there are just three steps: screwing on the feet, slotting the pieces together and tightening the lock nuts. These metal parts are made from high-grade aluminum that’s anodized black, while the boards are made from birch plywood precision-cut on CNC machines.

“From student flats in the city to family homes in the country, the places you live are constantly evolving. We think your furniture should too,” says the project’s Kickstarter page, which is raising funds to put the series into mass production. “Furniture’s a pain when you don’t need it anymore. You’ve got to sell it, give it away, or worse, throw it away. With CRISSCROSS, you can use the same parts to build something else.

Kickstarter backers get to reserve the kits of their choice before everyone else, with an estimated delivery date of September 2016. Hopefully they’ll reach their goal before a certain Swedish retailer gets some ideas for refining their own easily accessible, yet highly frustrating, products.